The Israel-Arab Reader (61 page)

Then came the Algerian and Libyan efforts and Arab meetings to convene an Arab summit—the uprising summit to promote common Arab action in support of the uprising and build a wide Arab front in the face of conspiratorial plots led by the Shultz project, which our people have turned down. In the shadow of these great achievements, the Zionist enemy mounted an attack against Lebanon, laid a siege to some villages, and used repression and oppression against the innocent in renewed attempts to divert international attention from the uprising and in a desperate attempt to undo the militant, harmonious, integral relationship between the popular uprising in the occupied land and the Palestinian revolution on one hand and the Lebanese nationalist movement on the other.

At a time when the need to close ranks and train guns on the usurper enemy has never been greater, a handful of aberrant dissidents in Lebanon who have broken away from the will of our people made a wretched attempt to split and undermine the various efforts seeking to realize a national consensus within the PLO and direct the guns at the usurper enemy to consolidate the triumphant uprising of our people.

O our heroic Palestinian people, while marking these days—the 22d anniversary of the Arab regimes' defeat and of the occupation of the remainder of our dear homeland, amid the convening of the Moscow summit and the Arab summit and also in view of George Shultz' attempts to resume the conspiracy aimed at aborting the uprising—our people's masses are daily escalating their victorious uprising. There will be no return nor will there be any retreat until occupation is removed and an independent Palestinian state is established under the PLO's leadership.

Our masses know their path through revolution to obtain their rights. It is the path of persistent struggle. More than 20 years of coercion, persecution, oppression, and attempts to liquidate our identity and our people's national cause have created the generation of the uprising—the generation of freedom, independence, and of building an independent national state on its sacred national soil. This generation is determined to make occupation pay a dear price for desecrating our land and holy places. It is also determined to turn occupation into a hell that will burn the occupying soldiers and settlers.

The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising calls on our masses to further escalate the delivery of painful blows to the new Nazis and to further entrench and organize the generation of the uprising and its specialized committees and strike teams along the path of carrying out a comprehensive civil disobedience and fulfilling the slogans and just demands of the uprising as a basic introduction to wrest our people's national legitimate rights to repatriation, self-determination, and the establishment of an independent state.

These slogans and demands include the need to implement the four Geneva Conventions; dispatch international observers to provide the necessary protection for the sons of our people; withdraw the army from the cities, villages, and camps; lift the siege clamped on them; release the detainees; return deportees to their homeland; cancel the taxes and other laws and legislations enacted by the occupation authorities; hold democratic elections for the municipal and village councils; and remove restrictions imposed on our national production to allow for the building and developing of the industrial, agricultural, and services sectors.

The PLO, the Unified National Leadership, along with our people's masses, while waging a tough struggle within a firmly established national unity, calls on the Arab summit leaders to shoulder their responsibilities before their peoples and history by supporting this Palestinian struggle not through denunciation, condemnation, and verbal backing, but by:

Along the path of implementing a comprehensive civil disobedience, the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, the PLO, emphasizes the following:

O masses of our struggling people, the PLO—the Unified National Leadership—calls on all segments of our people to mark the following days with sweeping mass anger coinciding with forthcoming political events by executing and implementing the following militant activities:

First, dedicating 28 and 29 May to massive marches and rallies involving all national cadres, organizations, and personalities so our voice—the voice of the uprising—may be heard loud and clear by the superpower leaders in Moscow.

Second, dedicating 30 May to an all-out strike and raising the pitch of the militant struggle to mark the Gorbachev-Reagan summit and increasing the writing of nationalist slogans and raising flags in all villages, cities and camps.

Third, dedicating 1 June—International Children's Day—to children's demonstrations raising Palestinian slogans and flags. In the meantime, various committees, especially committees of solidarity with victims of our people, will distribute gifts to the children of the martyrs, the wounded, detainees, and deportees.

Fourth, dedicating 3, 4, 5, and 6 June to full-scale strikes to mark the [Mideast] visit of Shultz, the Lebanese invasion, and the 22d [as heard] anniversary of the Zionist occupation. In the meantime, our masses and strike forces will stage demonstrations and confrontations with occupiers and their agents. May the land scorch the feet of the usurping occupiers and their agents.

Fifth, dedicating 7 June to Arab solidarity with the glorious uprising of our people, holding massive demonstrations, and urging Arab masses to stage rallies of sympathy with our victorious uprising.

O masses of our heroic people, who have destroyed the illusions of occupation in more than 20 years, who have refuted the claims about our people's coexistence with occupation, and who have destroyed all attempts to create feeble alternatives to our people's sole legitimate representative, the PLO, through destroying alternatives to the right to repatriation, to self-determination, and to an independent national state: You continue to proceed on the road through your suffering, through the huge sacrifices, and through the constant flow of blood on the road to achieving freedom and independence for our militant people.

Here is the victorious uprising destroying the apparatus and tools of the fascist occupation, which were established to serve the occupation's interests and to link the interests of our people's masses with the occupation. On the ruins of these tools you are building the apparatus of the heroic people's authority through the popular committees with their various tasks.

Here is the uprising restoring to our national cause its natural size as the cause of a people who are struggling for the sake of their legitimate national rights. This cause has thus become an important topic on the agenda of the Moscow summit as well as the major topic at the summit of the uprising in Algiers.

While saluting the combatants who returned to the ranks of the mother revolution, thereby rejecting the spilling of blood for the sake of achieving the objectives of those who reneged on our people's will, as well as those of Abu Musa [Sa'id Musa Muraghah], the one who reneged on this will, and his clique, the uprising masses appeal to the Lebanese nationalist movement to unify its ranks to confront the Zionist enemy and end their narrow differences, thus unifying the militant endeavors of the militant and pan-Arab Lebanese-Palestinian parties to make them serve as a significant factor and a principal pillar conducive to the achievement of victory.

At the same time, these masses appeal to all those exerting sincere efforts to accelerate the process of inter-Palestinian dialogue, to bolster the militant relationship with Syria, and to build an Arab base of steadfastness capable of achieving our nation's pan-Arab objectives. O you, masses of the valiant uprising. O you, people of martyrs. With steady and confident strides, we, along with you, are going through one phase after another in our popular uprising and revolt, strengthening the people's rules and authority on the road to general and comprehensive civil disobedience, which will take the form of securing a complete boycott between our people and the institutions of the occupying authority in all spheres.

This requires that we display further observance of the program of the phase and of that of the phases of the popular uprising, as well as of the decisions made by the Unified National Leadership, the PLO leadership.

We call upon our masses to remain alert and display serious and studied readiness to meet the requirements of civil disobedience. This readiness can materialize through providing the necessary supplies which can provide citizens' needs for at least one month. It includes enhancing selfsufficiency, displaying an eagerness to provide adequate quantities of water by preserving water wells, making available first aid, and enhancing the program of various committees—the popular, guard, information, and labor committees. Furthermore, this readiness can also materialize when emphasis is laid on the formation of further strike groups, the militant arm of our blessed popular revolution.

The PLO leadership, the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising, treading on the path of realizing comprehensive civil disobedience, emphasizes the following: